It has been more than two months since the first case of coronavirus was diagnosed in the US. Since then, the outbreak has spread across the nation, with more than 200,000 cases and nearly 4,000 deaths.

The US is now the global epicentre of the pandemic, surpassing the number of reported cases in China, where the virus began, and Italy, the hardest-hit European nation.

Although public health officials report that the peak of the outbreak in the US is still weeks, perhaps months, away, shortcomings in the US response - as well as some strengths - have already become apparent.

Here's a look at some of them.

MISTAKES

Medical supply shortages

Masks, gloves, gowns and ventilators. Doctors and hospitals across the country, but particularly in areas hardest hit by the pandemic, are scrambling for items essential to help those stricken by the virus and protect medical professionals.

The lack of adequate supplies has forced healthcare workers to reuse existing sanitary garb or create their own makeshift gear. A shortage of ventilators has state officials worried they will soon be forced into performing medical triage, deciding on the fly who receives the life-sustaining support - and who doesn't.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo complained that states, along with the federal government, were competing for equipment, driving up prices for everyone.

"It's like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator," he said.

It didn't have to be this way, says Jeffrey Levi, a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University. The US government failed to adequately maintain the stockpile of supplies necessary to deal with a pandemic like this - and then moved too slowly when the nature of the current crisis became apparent.

"We lost many weeks in terms of ramping up the production capacity around personal protection equipment and never fully utilizing government authority to make sure that production took place," he says.

Testing delays

According to Professor Levi, ramping up testing at an early date - as done in nations like South Korea and Singapore - is the key to controlling a viral outbreak like Covid-19. The inability of the US government to do so was the critical failure from which subsequent complications have cascaded.

"All of pandemic response is dependent on situational awareness - knowing what is going on and where it is happening," he says.

Without this information, public health officials are essentially flying blind, not knowing where the next viral hotspot will flare up. Comprehensive testing means infected patients can be identified and isolated, limiting the need for the kind of sweeping state-wide shelter-in-place orders that have frozen the US economy and led to millions of unemployed workers.

Levi says the responsibility for this failure lies squarely with the Trump administration, which disregarded pandemic response plans dating back more than a decade to the George W Bush presidency and failed to fully staff its public health bureaucracy.

"The political leadership in this administration really doesn't believe in government," Levi says. "That has really hampered their willingness to harness the resources the federal government had to respond at a time like this."

Is S Korea's rapid testing the key to coronavirus?

The numbers, particularly on testing, bear this out. The initial tests sent in February to just a handful of US laboratories by the administration were faulty.

By mid-March, the administration was promising at least 5 million tests by the end of the month. An independent analysis of totals on 30 March, however, indicate only a million tests have been conducted. That's more than any other country but the US population is roughly 329 million people.

What's more, because of crush of testing that has followed the initial shortages, the labs that analyse the results have been overwhelmed, leading to delays of a week or more before tested individuals can learn if they have the virus.

One case lays bare America's testing failure

Messaging 'whiplash' and political squabbles

At his press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump offered a grim outlook for the nation.

"I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead," he said.

His public health advisers followed that statement up with charts predicting at least 100,000 American deaths from the virus even under the current mitigating efforts.

The president's comments stood in stark contrast to remarks even just a week earlier, when he expressed hope that the US could begin to reopen businesses by the mid-April Easter holiday.

In January and February, as the viral outbreak devastated Chinese manufacturing and began exacting a high toll in Italy, the president repeatedly downplayed the threat to the US. Following the first few American cases, Trump and other administration officials said the situation was under control and would dissipate in the summer "like a miracle".

Inconsistent messages from the top are a real problem, Professor Levi says. "Pandemic preparedness is a constantly changing environment, and sometimes your message does change. In this case, however, you've also had whiplash around messages that are not necessarily reflecting a change in the science or what's happening on the ground, but instead reflecting political concerns."

The president has also feuded with Democratic state governors, criticising New York's Andrew Cuomo and belittling Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer on Twitter. He said state leaders needed to be "appreciative" of the federal government.

What this crisis reveals about US - and its president

Social-distancing failures

College students on spring break from classes packed Florida beaches. New York City residents filled subway cars. A church in Louisiana continues to welcome thousands despite pastor Tony Spell being criminally cited for violating an order limiting the size of gatherings.

"The virus, we believe, is politically motivated," Spell told a local television station. "We hold our religious rights dear, and we are going to assemble no matter what someone says."

Across the country, there have been numerous examples of Americans failing to heed the calls by public health professionals to avoid close social contact, sometimes abetted by local and state government officials who have been reluctant to order businesses to shutter and citizens to shelter in place.

"If I get corona, I get corona," one Florida beachgoer told CBS News in mid-March. "At the end of the day, I'm not going to let it stop me from partying."

Even steps taken with the best of intentions might have had adverse consequences. Curtailing public-transportation services, such as New York's subway, may have led to trains and busses that were more crowded. Universities that sent students home to their families may have contributed to the spread of the virus by returning infected individuals to cities, neighborhoods and homes not yet in full lockdown.

The lack of clarity in the president's order to halt entry into the US from Europe - which at first seemed to apply US citizens as well as foreign nationals - led to a crushing crowds at airports where unscreened infected passengers could easily transit the disease to others.

Decisions like those may have had dire consequences, hampering efforts to contain the spread of the disease throughout the nation - the public health equivalent of throwing petrol on an already raging fire.

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